Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Kate Riley’s 10-year-old son received a letter of congratulations signed by Washington’s governor and state superintendent.

“Congratulations!” it started. “… We are very proud of you, and you should be very proud of yourself.”

Apparently, my son “achieved the state reading, writing and mathematics learning standards.”

But her autistic son, who spends most of his time in a special-education classroom, is years behind. He “can read some words, can add a little and can barely draw a straight line.”

An editorial writer, Riley has backed high standards since she tutored a 30-year-old high school graduate with a third-grade reading level. But she agreed that students with special needs should have alternative ways to show mastery of the standards, such as providing a portfolio of work.

Which is how my son took the test — by portfolio in the Washington Alternate Assessment System. It was a meticulously kept body of work, representing honest, hard effort and, indeed, progress. But it did not — repeat, did not — meet any common-sense interpretation of fourth-grade standards.

That’s because states can set their own standards for special-education students under No Child Left Behind. In Washington state, special-ed students are counted as successful if they meet the goals in their Individual Education Plans. They aren’t measured by the standards set for other students.

“You don’t want him to count against the school, do you?” was a question I heard more than once as I asked questions. Well, no, but I don’t want him to artificially inflate the school’s success rate, either. I especially don’t want to let schools off the hook if they are failing younger versions of my adult student years ago, who, when given a chance, advanced quickly to ninth-grade reading level.

Her son can’t meet real standards no matter how hard he tries, Riley writes, but most special-education students can if they’re taught well and work hard. Using “alternative assessments” to water down the standards makes it easy to declare success and set young people up for long-term failure.

Update: A Brandeis student who spent six years in special education argues that students with mild to moderate learning disabilities should do the same work as their classmates.

They sequestered me in a classroom and lessened my coursework. The program incentivized me to cheat and not try as hard as I could. Also, in the difficult world of today, special education programs should not provide a hammock. Students with moderate learning disabilities should learn how to cope with their problems and adapt to the real world.

He does recommend his “sped” study skills course for all students.

The neighborhood D.C. school had weak test scores and an inaccessible principal, writes David Nicholson in I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son.

The thing is, with a second-grader who has already read the first two Harry Potter books, I can’t wait the four or five years it will take to begin to undo decades of neglect and mismanagement of District schools, much less the additional time needed to create programs for the gifted and talented.

His son thrived for several years at a charter school, but inexperience by administrators and teachers took a toll. Unable to afford private tuition, Nicholson moved to the suburbs.

So why all the middle-class angst and no mention of vouchers for low-income parents, responds Megan McArdle.

. . . every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today.

Annoyed by an anti-voucher this thread on 11D, she argues both sides of the voucher issue in Vouching for vouchers.

. . . voucher opponents who have pulled their own kids out of failing inner city schools . . . have no good answer for why their choice is morally worthy, but vouchers are horrifying; their response to the deep need of kids in failing schools is a slightly gussied up version of “screw you, I’ve got mine.” Their children’s future, you see, is an infinitely precious resource that trumps their principles of distributional justice and community solidarity, but they cannot imagine putting the futures of poorer, darker skinned children ahead of sacred principles such as “Thou shalt not allow children to attend schools run by the Catholic Church” and “Supporting the public schools (even when they suck)”.

Another post sums up her argument by asking how many educated people would “oppose vouchers if they were the only way to get their child out of an inner-city public school?”

How many of them would accept that their child had to be left in that school because the systemic effects of allowing their child to exit that repulsive school would be dreadful?

She has more voucher hypocrisy posts on her site, which is now affiliated with The Atlantic, and tons of comments.

Update: Everyone is wrong on vouchers, says The Quick and the Ed. But aren’t some wronger than others?

Twelve percent of high schools are “dropout factories” where “no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year,” reports a Johns Hopkins study commissioned for Associated Press.

“If you’re born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?” asks Bob Balfanz, the researcher at Johns Hopkins University who defines such a school as a “dropout factory.”

. . . While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, Balfanz says.

Good news? Well, it hasn’t gotten any worse over the last decade.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half.

In reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, which focuses on K-8 education, Congress may require high schools to report graduation rates by race, ethnicity and poverty status, mandate a uniform method of counting graduation rates and encourage states to “build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.” Tracking students’ progress would be very useful.

Check up on local stats at Alliance for Excellent Education’s high school data base.

On Scrappleface, the National Education Association brags about the productivity in dropout factories.

As Congress prepares this week to put more money into the federal No Child Left Behind program, the NEA can boast that in states like South Carolina and Florida more than half of the schools have already achieved the coveted “dropout factory” status which qualifies them for a surge in federal funding.

“In previous generations,” the union source said, “It could take up to three years to move the product through the factory, and out the door with a diploma. We’ve found that if you focus on what logistics experts call ‘through-put’ and de-emphasize the diploma, you can get the product on the streets a lot faster.”

Yes, it’s satire.

In Manchester, Connecticut, a school board member wants to grade parents on ensuring their children do homework, get to class on time, eat a good breakfast and are dressed appropriately for the weather. Parents also would lose points if they don’t attend twice-yearly parent-teacher conferences.

The superintendent and the PTA hate the idea, saying it will anger parents.